Walking on Edge: A Pilgrimage to Santiago

By Reino Gevers

Jake decides to walk the Camino de Santiago after hitting a wall in his career and marriage. After near-disaster in the Pyrenees mountains he meets people who save him from his own ignorance and give him entirely new insights about purpose and meaning of life. Jake encounters much weightier matters than merely negotiating the mountainous terrain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: PowerBodyMind
• Release date: Jul 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9783743109469

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE — LOST

My left foot slipped dangerously close to the edge, making me lose balance and fall hard to the ground.

Thunder snapped like a whiplash cracking the air, the lightning striking the rock face just ahead, echoing into the valley below with a ricocheting crescendo.

It was cold and I was lost in the Pyrenees mountains along the border between France and Spain. It was late, dusk was approaching. An invisible cold hand seemed to grip at my throat.

Lying face down, I stared into what seemed like a deep dark hole below. It was fear and at the same time mesmerizing, tempting.

One slip, one step and I would be falling, falling. It seemed so easy. It would be one way of telling the world to get lost.

The exhaustion, the pain. At that point, I had found myself in a spiral of complete hopelessness. It could have been the way out. I moved closer to the edge. What if I hit a ledge on the way down, with death taking days and making me endure excruciating pain?

Before I could find the answer, thunder struck again with such force that I felt myself yanked from the ground, and hitting the rock wall behind me.

I felt my ears ringing as if being hit by a hard hand, my heart pounding against my chest, all muscles taut with fear and the sudden rush of adrenaline.

I looked around, bulging my fists, bracing for the next wave, until realizing that there was nothing.

I was completely alone.

After what seemed like an eternity I tried to get up, feeling again the sharp pain in my left knee, the blisters on my toes and the pain in my lower back.

Finally, shaking unsteadily on my feet with the far too heavy backpack weighing me down, I continued the climb.

I had to continue. Spending the night in the cold and the rain was no alternative. Many a hiker had gotten lost here before and frozen to death in the bone-chilling night temperatures.

The snapping thunder behind me was like a clarion call telling me to just keep on walking.

It was getting late. Darkness was setting in. Once again it had been my wandering thoughts, a lack of awareness that made me miss the last waymarker on what was in fact a clearly marked trial to Col du Somport in Spain.

Thoughts of the events just prior to my departure on the flight to Toulouse had once again sidetracked me.

It had been a spontaneous decision to go on a walk. I was unprepared for the physical and emotional challenges that come with those first days of loneliness.

Is there anybody out there?

A gust of wind, fanning the trees was the only answer.

What was that force that had pulled me from the crevice? My mind must be playing games – too much emotional stress over the past few months.

Yet, an inner voice seemed to urge me on: Just keep walking.

Taking a rest was no alternative. The cold, wet mountain air was creeping through every pore of my body.

Please, God, help me find a way to get out of here; I pleaded. Waiting for death from exposure to the elements must be one of the worst ways to die.

Then in the distance the echo of ringing cowbells. The all too familiar sound that was so comforting. It was like the chime of a welcome home ceremony, like a wake-up call and the first sign of civilization.

A clearing. The smell of fresh dew and grass. A cow lazily picked up its head while the other animals in the herd took no notice. A path? Finally, Lights in the distance. All I needed was to follow the trail downhill.

It is amazing what power the human body can tap from unknown resources. I increased my pace.

Careful, Jake! At this point I could not risk a fall or an injury, forcing me to stay out in the cold.

I had forgotten the blisters and the pain. It took me another two hours before I hit the tarred road that led me straight into the village and the only inn in town. The landlady, in a purple dressing gown, looked sheepishly from her desk and put aside the glossy magazine she was reading.

People are not careful in areas they don’t know, she said.

Happens every summer and sometimes even in winter. Costs a taxpayer lots of money to go out and find them in the mountain with a rescue team.

I was not in any mood to argue.

CHAPTER TWO — CHUCK

A bear followed me through the forest, cornering me on a narrow ledge, bearing its teeth and lunging at me with a massive paw.

Then it was on top of me, pinning me to the ground. Somehow, I managed to free myself but was falling down that ledge with frightening speed, then was wedged between two rocks, unable to move.

I woke from that nightmare, my body bathed in sweat, my heart pounding as if I had run a marathon, my blistered feet hurting.

It was close to 7 a.m. I could have done with more sleep. I attended to a blister on my right toe opening it with a scissor so that the fluid could ooze out, and using a special hiker’s plaster to close the wound.

The landlady was a lot more cheerful in the morning, serving me a coffee and a fresh croissant. It was France and the French are not into having a sumptuous breakfast. I left Bedous at 7.30, limping along at a slow pace as best I could.

Outside a camping site I found a trash bin and started shedding some of the clutter in my backpack. It was unnecessary eating utensils, a heavy ground sheet, several items of clothing, an extra pair of shoes, books, pots.

Shedding that weight made walking with my injured feet a lot easier. I had not heeded Claire’s advice that every kilogram in your backpack will start feeling like 10 kilograms. I had to learn the hard way, stubborn as I was.

My mind was wandering into a dark pit of nothingness. I had started my pilgrimage in Lourdes and been on the path for a week. I was two days behind schedule, having lost much time losing my way and having to go slow with a low-quality backpack loaded with clutter.

I would at most reach Urdos, still a stretch from the French-Spanish border at Somport.

I had been working for my newspaper for 20 years and now it was no more - apart from an online edition with our once large and experienced editorial team laid off.

For many years I had enjoyed my work as a correspondent, reporting on many of the world's political hotspots. Job cuts in the media industry, had reduced journalism to regurgitating information.

Bound to a desk was a far cry from experiencing world events firsthand. Like my job, the relationship I had been in had become sour.

If you decide to leave me alone here to go to Spain, then you will come back to an empty apartment with the divorce papers in the mail, my wife warned me.

I decided to go anyway. Nothing could stop the urge to walk the Camino.

We will see each other when we see each other, I said as I took my backpack and walked out the door.

It was the end of a seven-year marriage, yet I felt no urge, nor had the energy, to defend, justify and explain.

There had been too much of it. Well, you did this … You did that.

I'm not happy in our relationship because …

After the communication breakdown came long moments of silence, the realization dawning.

We had nothing more in common, nothing more to talk about. The witty, easy going tolerance of each other during romance was gone.

There is a sadness about what once was, which lasts for a while until the tension underlying the disappointment, loss of love and compassion is overwhelmed by angry outbursts and irritability.

Couples fall in love and then fall out of it. I had been in three relationships that ended in the seventh year and was disappointed and angry at myself for having failed.

It was a common pattern to stay in jobs and relationships that had long outlived their usefulness.

Lessons that had to be learned had long been learned, and for too long I had just been going through the motions like a sad song in replay mode.

The result was growing irritability, bouts of sickness, lack of sleep, fatigue and a general loss of meaning and purpose.

This time, I said to myself, I would not again stumble into a new relationship. I needed time for reflection and a reset button for what I wanted for the rest of my remaining lifetime.

I was following an inner calling, an answer to so many of life's big questions, and I was not finding that answer by staying in a comfort zone.

If I continued staying in that groove, that supposed comfort zone, fate would strike with a serious illness or death – that much my higher self was telling me.

A part of me was deeply aware that each one of us lives for a purpose, has unique talents and abilities. I was unhappy because I had lost direction and purpose.

The Camino de Santiago has been one of the most important Christian pilgrimage routes for over 1,000 years. It is a network of paths leading from every major European city to Santiago de Compostela.

Several hundred thousand people walk the route each year. And a good friend, Claire, who had walked it the previous year, mentioned it to me the first time.

Just try it, Jake. For me it was life-changing, and maybe you will find the answers you are looking for on the Camino, she said.

Just be open to the mystery of the path, she said, giving me a guide book to read.

Perhaps it was more her messianic enthusiasm that convinced me and not the idea, as the guide book explained, of going on a modern-day pilgrimage.

Also, known as the St. James Way, the Camino was one of the most important Christian pilgrimage routes in the Middle Ages. According to legend, the remains of James, one of the first disciples of Jesus, were buried on a hilltop in Santiago, after his martyrdom at the hands of Herod Agrippa.

A larger number of pilgrims from beyond the Pyrenees began walking to the shrine of St. James around the 11th century. They were on the road for months, and many died from disease, physical exhaustion or other ailments.

The Camino has survived to this day. Despite centuries when the number of pilgrims diminished to a trickle because of political turmoil and wars.

For me it was an opportunity to get away on a search for meaning at a time when my life was falling apart. Claire had warned me:

"I need to tell you this, Jake.

Remain humble on the path, or the path will humble you.

And, the path was certainly teaching me humility in more ways than I had imagined.

I had hardly left Lourdes when I got lost the first time in drenching rain.

The path was well marked, but if your mind wanders, and a dozen monkeys dance in your head, the red-blue way markers on trees and stones are easily overlooked.

I had followed Claire's advice by starting my pilgrimage along the Arles route in Lourdes. I was neither a Catholic nor a devout Christian, my journalistic cynicism having replaced any religious notions.

It seemed logical to choose an easier route where I could spend the first days getting warmed up on short 12- to 15 kilometer stages, rather than starting the Camino Frances at St. Jean Pied de Port, a bustling French town in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

St. Jean is where most people start the Camino Frances. It is beautiful but a tough one if you go there unprepared, like you are, Claire had warned me.

From St Jean, it was a steep climb, winding to an altitude of 1,430 meters before descending into Roncesvalles for a good 27 kilometers. Every year hikers get lost in bad weather and freak storms have claimed many a pilgrim’s life.

After left the train station at Lourdes, it started raining. I followed the signs to the famous grotto and stopped at a tavern to put on my rain jacket.

This my property. You want to eat or drink, you stay, otherwise go! the irate tavern owner said, motioning at me as if I were a vagrant.

I felt anger rise in me but was too tired to start a fight. I walked past rows and rows of shops selling religious mementos when I heard a voice behind me. Peregrino! Peregrino!

A kind lady showed me the way to the pilgrim's hostel, a short walk up a hill. I was happy to have found a place to stay.

The 14-year old peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous had the first of 18 apparitions on February 11, 1858. Her younger sister, Toinette, and their friend Jeanne Abadie were out looking for firewood near the grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes.

After taking off her shoes to walk through a nearby stream, Bernadette suddenly feels a gust of wind. Looking up at the grotto, she sees, in the upper corner of the rock wall, a beautiful lady, wearing a white dress with a blue belt and a yellow rose on each foot.

Bernadette falls to the ground and does not move. But then the lady signals to Bernadette with her finger to come closer. Bernadette grabs her rosary and tries to make the sign of the cross. But she is unable to do this until the lady, who is also carrying a rosary with a large, shining crucifix has made the sign of the cross.

The lady lets the beads slide through her fingers without moving